"Let no freedom be allowed to novelty, because it is not fitting that any addition should be made to antiquity. Let not the clear faith and belief of our forefathers be fouled by any muddy admixture."
-- Pope Sixtus III

Friday, August 04, 2017

Let me lay some reality on the blue-helmeted child-raping justice warriors at the UN and their useful idiots in the ChristLast press: False religion makes you stupid, angry, frustrated and violent.Fyodor's forecast is for many more generations of unchecked goat-raping.

A U.N. study of 43 people who left their countries to become “foreign terrorist fighters” in Syria has found that most came from disadvantaged backgrounds, lacked good education and decent jobs — and saw their Muslim religion “in terms of justice and injustice rather than in terms of piety and spirituality.”The study for the U.N. Counter-Terrorism Center released Thursday said that based on interviews with the 42 men and one woman, a typical “foreign terrorist fighter,” or FTF, is most likely to be young, male and feel “their life lacked meaning.”But Professor Hamed el-Said of Manchester Metropolitan University and British terrorism expert Richard Barrett, who conducted the study, said beyond that it’s difficult to generalize why they wanted to go to Syria.They cited “a mix of factors,” saying “social networks often seem to play a key role” and “equally important is the role and identity of the recruiters, who are not necessarily members of armed groups” but are more likely to be sympathizers.Almost 40 percent of the sample said they were motivated to go to Syria by “an obligation to defend their fellow Sunnis from the Syrian government and its allies by force,” the report said. “This confirms that many Muslim youth, regardless of where they come from, perceive the conflict in Syria in community more than in religious terms.”The authors said this perception of a duty to defend their group during a war “is an important element in understanding what may motivate an individual to become an FTF.”Other responses confirmed “the lack of ideology” as a motivating factor, they said, noting for example that “very few of this sample believe in the idea of an Islamic State or of establishing a caliphate in the Levant.”According to a U.N. estimate in March 2015, there were more than 25,000 FTFs from over 100 countries.The authors said that while the issue of FTFs has risen to the top of the political agenda in many countries, there is a lack of detailed knowledge about why people choose to join terrorist organizations — and why some return home.The authors stressed that their study is not a random sample, but they said it is one of the largest samples of face-to-face interviews conducted with FTFs, and therefore they believe the report “adds significantly to current research.”Of the 43 people interviewed representing 12 nationalities, 33, or 77 percent, reached Syria but subsequently decided to leave, the report said. The other 10 were either intercepted by authorities in their own country or stopped en route to Syria by authorities in a transit country.The authors said 26 were interviewed in prison, and the remaining 17 in official premises or public places arranged by security officials from the host country, though generally not in their presence.Despite an appeal to all U.N. member states, the authors expressed regret that only seven countries agreed to participate in the study — three from the European Union and four from the Middle East and North Africa.The report said the participants “claimed they did not go to Syria with the intention of becoming a terrorist, nor did they return with that purpose in mind.” In Syria, most said the only military experience they received was a simple course on how to shoot with no bullets, “as shooting draws the attention of the enemy.” Only five of the 43 admitted to participating in fighting in Syria, the report said.The authors said families had “a powerful influence” in convincing those interviewed to leave Syria, as well as their own “disillusionment” and “disappointment.”El-Said and Barrett expressed hope that the study “will assist member states to design and implement policies and programs that discourage those who are about to or are thinking of going to Syria, and reintegrate those who have already returned, or who are about to do so,” with minimum risk to public safety.

Insidious is the force that causes us to dream of things we wish (or don’t wish) were so. Thus, on the eve of this column’s creation, I dreamed of Donald J. Trump. We were seated at a dinner table for eight, but the other six chairs were empty. We spoke of many things, from education to globalization and the near-universal crisis of identity. The president was courtly, humble, erudite and wise.I awoke suddenly to the harsh sounds of braying asses (I had left the TV on), only to realize that I was actually dreaming of Adlai Stevenson, the twice-defeated presidential candidate who lost to Dwight D. Eisenhower in part because of his excess erudition. In today’s clever-ish jargon, he was too thinky.Mine was a dream of wishes, obviously, for we suffer no such excesses now. This is not to besmirch Eisenhower, who was no intellectual midget. He did, after all, warn in his 1961 farewell address against the future peril of a military-industrial complex that would keep America on the brink of war and stoke “the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power.” Yeah, but Ike gave us the Interstate Highway System, AmeriKKKa's very own fascist Autobahn, which cut real communities (not the fake ones everybody brays about these days) and our nation to pieces. Talk about fighting the last war and losing the peace...A gentleman who reportedly rarely cursed, he had proved himself a leader directing American forces in World War II. Perhaps pivotally, he had a great smile, which made him instantly likable. Sound familiar?In addition to his appeal, his campaign buttons, “I like Ike,” had the requisite single-syllable appeal to postwar sensibilities. A gentle general, Eisenhower was the stoic, commanding father figure who would take charge, while Stevenson was still seeking the deeper meaning of things.Trump couldn’t be more different than either man, a testament to how much times have changed — and been changed — by technology and the gradual dissolution of traditional institutions.Though he shows great respect for the military, now having hired retired Gen. John F. Kelly as his chief of staff, Trump’s own battlefield was real estate, and, by his own telling, his sexcapades were his Vietnam. Obviously, The Orange Menace, like its country, did not learn the lessons of "Vietnam".He’s no Ike, in other words. As a 140-character thinker, he’s no Stevenson either.Years ago, I declared the end of civilization when ABC’s George Stephanopoulos conducted an interview with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) via Twitter. My objection then was that nothing worthwhile could be said in 140 characters. Thanks to Trump’s daily expurgations, I stand corrected. Nations can be put on guard and personnel dispatched to the bread line with a presidential tweet.Then again, civilization doesn’t seem as securely tethered as it once was. The unraveling began decades ago in the new world, but it seems no mere coincidence that the chaotic tempo of our daily lives corresponds to diminishing cognitive abilities resulting from attention spans that mimic a honeybee’s.The honeybees are dropping like flies, sweetie. I'm guessing their attention spans are the least of their worries. Just like us.What difference does one's attention span make when one's soul is barren, Kathleen?“Can you imagine reading Faulkner now?” I recently asked a friend. “We can’t,” he responded. Faulkner? Ok, I like Faulkner. Is he really the pivot point of our civilization, though? Let's teach the kiddies how to read and write first, shall we?And Trump, who proudly prefers television to newspapers and Twitter to books, is our president.We’ve all exhausted our stores of punditry in trying to explain how and why The Donald won. Most analysis focuses on quantifiable voter concerns — unemployment, immigration, trade, terrorism and the sort. But it’s the unquantifiable that really drives the ballot: instinct. Trump figured out how to match his primitive drives to the modern needs of his supporters.INSTANT TRANSLATION: "A Cockjerk Orange is a moronic pervert and so is everybody else."Come Election Day, the instinctual question was: Which of these two characters is most likely to keep the fires stoked and the predators scared? Trump, the overconfident lobber of id-ioms? (See “Make America Great Again!”) Or Hillary Clinton, the head-nodding yes woman who lacked a platform higher than the heels of her sensible shoes?Done.Six of one, a half dozen of the other. (I have been waiting decades for an appropriate moment to use that one.) Distaff Clump was just a bit lower-key in its mendacity, that's all.But what now? In just over six months in office, Trump has managed to alienate our allies, shatter our international standing, demonstrate no leadership ability or essential knowledge, fire or replace people in key positions, and exacerbate global tensions with his lack of discipline, maturity and self-control. Who can save us from ourselves?Well, duh. Nobody can because we don't want to be saved. The Mess-iahdent is exactly what we want and deserve. Its values - stomach, wallet, and penis (not necessarily in that order) are AmeriKKKa's values. Anyone care to challenge me on that one?As that dirty little commie stooge Pogo (Pogo - Wikipedia ) might have said: "We have met the fascist and he is us."There are still plenty of deep thinkers out there, but who is listening? Who is reading? Who among those who can contemplate the future — as opposed to retweeting this-just-happened — is even willing to lead? And what, finally, is leadership in an era when centuries-old institutions are failing and commonly shared beliefs are no longer common or shared?Well, somebody. Someone who has consulted history to understand present and future challenges, who understands the role and risks of technology — and who can help people understand the daily chaos with the erudition of Stevenson, the humanity of Eisenhower and the wisdom of one we’ve yet to know. Now there’s a dream worth pursuing.I will not hold my breath, Kathy.

Thursday, August 03, 2017

Remember the good old days, kiddies, when Real Conservatives roamed the land? They were real men with balls as big as church bells...Nope. Me neither.Goldwater turned out to be a Repansycan once he was out of office and old enough to not bother lying any longer. Reagan? At least he didn't like commies much. I will give him that.Mr. Goldberg sees little boys who want to grow up to be big fascists and lord it over their neighbors and think being a dumbass pervert like A Cockjerk Orange is the way to do it. Sadly, this kind of crap is not new in politics. Just read about American presidential campaigns of the 19th Century...

A friend of mine who attended the Conservative Political Action Conference earlier this year – I skipped it — reported to me that the young Republican men were “wearing their ties down past their [crotches].”I cleaned up the quote a bit for the benefit of a family newspaper. Though I’m not sure why I should bother when a White House communications director has helped so many staid institutions expand their horizons. As my National Review colleague Kyle Smith noted, the New York Times has a long history of insisting that vulgarities do not meet the definition of news fit to print. For instance, it is the Times’ standard practice to render a colloquialism for speaking gross untruths that combines the male of the bovine species with the fully processed product of what it consumes as a “barnyard epithet.” But in the wake of recently hired and recently fired White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci’s profanity-laced, on-the-record tirade with a New Yorker reporter, the Gray Lady went blue. It printed, sans bowdlerization, words and phrases that surely would have been just as relevant to its coverage of President Lyndon Johnson, to say nothing of Bill Clinton.My point here is not to criticize the Times’ double standards. (There will be plenty of opportunities down the road for that.) It’s to note that politics — or, more accurately, power — has a funny way of changing standards.Which brings me back to those ties. I’ve been around young conservatives since I was one myself, and it’s always interesting to see how fashion changes. When the first President Bush was in office, blue blazers were a kind of unofficial uniform for young men eager to mimic what then-Bush aide Torie Clarke called “the C-SPAN and galoshes” crowd surrounding the president. When the second Bush was in office, the cowboy boot retailers near Young America’s Foundation chapters must have seen a huge increase in sales. And now, because the president of the United States wears abnormally long power ties (presumably to hide his girth), one sees more and more twentysomething men sporting the new cravat codpiece. This is not a phenomenon unique to conservatives. While it’s an urban legend that JFK’s alleged refusal to wear a fedora to his inaugural killed the hat industry, countless young liberals with political ambitions tried to replicate the way Kennedy talked. When Franklin D. Roosevelt was a kid, he ostentatiously mimicked his distant cousin, Teddy, wearing those pince-nez glasses and shouting “bully!”So about those barnyard epithets. It’s hard to miss how so many rank-and-file Republicans relish the president’s crude taunts and insults. Nor is it easy to overlook the fact that the president seemed perfectly comfortable with Scaramucci speaking like a Sopranos character (claims by the White House press secretary in the wake of Scaramucci’s firing notwithstanding). Not long ago, it fell to conservatives such as Bill Bennett, Ralph Reed, Tony Perkins, and Mike Huckabee to denounce vulgarity wherever they saw it. And while these men don’t publicly condone Trump’s language, they essentially roll their eyes at anyone who makes much of a fuss. And among the rank and file on Twitter, Facebook, etc., there’s fierce competition to be as vulgar as possible, or to be as vigorous as possible in defending presidential vulgarity. Of course, the president is not only changing standards — he’s the product of them. Over the last decade or so, a whole cottage industry of young anti-left sensationalists has embraced the romantic slogan Épater la bourgeoisie! Their crudeness isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. INSTANT TRANSLATION: "Shock the middle class prudes!"The rising vulgar tide is typically justified either by the need to seem authentic or as genuflection to the sacred right to fight political correctness. Never mind that not everything that is politically incorrect is therefore correct. (William F. Buckley was not PC, but he had the best manners of anyone I ever met.) And the competition to seem verbally authentic has spilled over the ideological retaining wall. The Democratic National Committee sells a T-shirt that reads “Democrats Give a S*** About People.” Several leading Democrats have started dropping F-bombs and other phrases, seemingly as a way to prove their populist street cred.I guess we’ll know this race to the bottom is over when socialist hero Bernie Sanders starts wearing his ties past his fly.Colonel Comrade Sanders' pants zip in the back. Everybody knows that. (That's not vulgarity, kiddies, that's what used to be known as journalism.)

Donald Trump suggested his demand for payment for a border wall with Mexico was merely a political ploy, and told Mexico’s president his refusal to pay should not be mentioned in public.From the border wall to refugees, the White House transcripts paint a sobering picture of the president’s conflicting statements The news opened Trump to charges of hypocrisy and letting down his support base. A border wall paid for by Mexico was Trump’s signature issue in his run for the White House, as crowds at campaign rallies joined call-and-response routines and Trump railed against undocumented Mexican migrants for what he said was their predilection for crime.But in a phone conversation with Enrique Peña Nieto on 27 January, a week after Trump’s inauguration as president, Trump said: “From an economic issue, it is the least important thing we were talking about.”SUCKERS!YOU BETRAYED YOUR BIRTHRIGHT AS FREE MEN BY BUYING THIS LITTLE PERVERT'S LIES! SHAME ON YOU!He added: “Psychologically, it means something.”SUCKERS!A White House transcript of the call was published by the Washington Post on Thursday. The Post also published a transcript of Trump’s call on 28 January with Malcolm Turnbull, the prime minister of Australia, in which he tried to wriggle out of an Obama-era deal to resettle refugees currently held on Manus Island and Nauru.Much of the conversation with Peña Nieto focused on Trump’s acknowledgment that Mexico would not pay for the wall and his need for Peña Nieto not to say so. The Mexican president had cancelled a planned visit to Washington over the issue.Trump said: “The fact is we are both in a little bit of a political bind, because I have to have Mexico pay for the wall – I have to.”BEHOLD YOUR BRAVE NATIONALIST-POPULIST SAVIOR!IT IS CLEARLY READY TO SUCK MEXICAN DICK TO PREVENT YOU FROM DISCOVERING HE IS JUST LIKE EVERY OTHER ASSHOLE WHO RULES OVER YOU!IT DOESN'T GIVE A DAMN ABOUT YOU OR YOUR CONCERNS!SUCKERS!Referring to the Mexican president’s insistence that he would not pay, Trump said: “You cannot say that to the press. The press is going to go with that and I cannot live with that. You cannot say that to the press because I cannot negotiate under those circumstances.”Trump even threatened to cut off relations with Peña Nieto. The funding “will work out in the formula somehow”, he said, adding later: “It will come out in the wash, and that is OK.” But “if you are going to say that Mexico is not going to pay for the wall, then I do not want to meet with you guys any more because I cannot live with that.”HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!SUCKERS!In Mexico, where Trump is reviled and Peña Nieto has been criticised for failing to fight a bully, the release of the transcript led some pundits to say that strategy of deference was not working.“What this transcript shows is that Trump views the US-Mexico relationship like it’s employer-employee,” said Esteban Illades, editor of the magazine Nexos. “Mexico must do what he says in order to keep its job. “The threat from the first phone call seems to have worked. Peña’s defiance of Trump is always out of earshot of the American president. He’s never there when Peña says Mexico won’t pay.”Others saw the issue differently. “This is a boost for Peña’s image in Mexico,” said José Carreño, a columnist and commentator on foreign affairs. “All of a sudden he looks a lot stronger. But it is less about Peña than about Trump. Trump comes across less a bully than a politician who realizes he has gone too far in promises and is trying to find a way out without losing face.”Peña Nieto looks like a top and the Orange Mess-iah looks like a sissyfag bottom.Peña Nieto has passed up repeated opportunities to publicly tell Trump Mexico will not pay for the wall. During a joint appearance last August at the presidential palace in Mexico City, he stood passively as Trump said details would be discussed at a later date. Peña Nieto had the last word. He did not rebut Trump.At the G-20 summit in Hamburg last month, Trump again voiced approval for having Mexico pay. Peña Nieto said nothing. The Mexican foreign minister, Luis Videgaray, later told a Mexico City radio station neither he nor the president had heard Trump’s comments.Videgaray – who proposed the Trump campaign trip to Mexico – became foreign minister in January. It was believed that he and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, had a strong relationship that could be leveraged.The leak of conversations between the US president and the leaders of Mexico and Australia may well be a cry for help from within the administration Whomever leaked these transcripts should be fired immediately and then given a medal.BTW, did you see that arch-sissy Pansy Graham of South Carolina throw a hissy fit about this leak? Priceless! Orange Clump is exactly what the Repansycans deserve. Too bad the rest of us non-suckers have to suffer for their treasonous stupidity.Trump recognised that relationship in the White House call, telling Peña Nieto: “I did not want to meet with anybody. It was only because of a very good relationship that Jared Kushner has with Luis that these two decided to meet and discuss, but I was not really in favor for that meeting.”Some in Mexico interpreted Peña Nieto’s passivity as an attempt to avoid unduly angering Trump over the impending renegotiation of Nafta, the key trade accord between Canada, the US and Mexico. Talks start this month.In the transcript published by the Post, Trump also offered military aid to deal with drug cartels, an offer – or perhaps veiled threat – first reported in February.“You have some pretty tough hombres in Mexico that you may need help with, and we are willing to help you with that big-league,” he said.He added, of the fight against organized crime: “Listen, I know how tough these guys are – our military will knock them out like you never thought of. We will work to help you knock them out because your country does not want that.”Trump also dwelled on his immigration promises in his conversation with Turnbull.“This is going to kill me,” he said to Turnbull. “I am the world’s greatest person that does not want to let people into the country.”He added: “This deal will make me look terrible.”HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!SUCKERS!

In her fifth month of pregnancy, Dana Edell learned that she was carrying a boy. Her parents, who are Conservative Jews, asked about the ritual circumcision.“Well, what if I’m considering not circumcising?” Ms. Edell recalled saying. “My parents looked at me like I had just said, ‘Well, what if I’m considering sacrificing him to Satan?’”Ha-ha! That famous Jewish sense of humor. Actually, sweetie, you'll give him to Satan when you teach him to be a non-observant Jew.For thousands of years, Jewish families have marked the beginning of a boy’s life with a bris ceremony on the eighth day after birth. A bris includes a circumcision performed by a mohel, or a ritual circumciser, and a baby naming. The practice is rooted in Genesis, when God instructs Abraham to circumcise himself and all of his descendants as a sign of their contract with God.But some Jewish parents, aghast at what they see as unnecessary infliction of pain or even mutilation, are retreating from the ancient ritual. Some are choosing to forgo the bris in favor of a medical circumcision. Others are opting out of circumcision altogether.This change in the Jewish community has paralleled an American trend. For much of the 20th century, the consensus was to circumcise. But since the 1970s, the conventional wisdom has shifted a bit: The American Academy of Pediatrics said in 2012 that while the benefits outweigh the risks, it would not “recommend universal newborn circumcision.” Medicaid no longer covers circumcision in a number of states and in the past four decades, the percentage of newborns that are circumcised has dropped by six percentage points, according to an analysis published in 2014 in the medical journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings. Much of that can be attributed to a growing Hispanic immigrant population, a group that historically circumcises less.Hey Pepe! What's with your peepee?The science around the medical benefits of circumcision in the United States is inconclusive, though the American Academy of Pediatrics notes that it can help prevent some sexually transmitted infections like H.I.V., as well as penile cancer and urinary tract infections.“I think there was a time when all American baby boys were circumcised, of all religions,” said Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, the largest Jewish movement in North America. “Now it’s a choice. It’s a decision.”“I talk to a lot of families that really struggle with this decision,” said Dr. Emily Blake, a New York-based OB/GYN who is also trained as a mohel in the Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist traditions. She has been performing the bris ceremony since 1990. The questions parents consider range from the practical — How much will it hurt? — to the existential — Will my son even be Jewish?Ms. Edell, 41, who lives in Brooklyn and works as the executive director of a young feminists’ group called Spark Movement, is raising her son as a single mother. She described the decision around circumcision as “easily the most challenging and stressful” one she has made as a parent. (Her son is only 15 months old.) Ms. Edell grew up in an observant Jewish family; she went to a Jewish school and to Jewish summer camp.“I knew that I wanted to raise my child Jewish and in a Jewish home. And yet I’m also a feminist and activist, and believe very strongly in the right to your own body,” she said.WTF? I think a true feminist would love to have a penis cut up Just as a matter of principle.She decided not to circumcise, a choice she said her parents eventually accepted. Instead she had a “gentle bris” ceremony with alternative ritual objects: a pomegranate, a gold kiddush cup, and a large ceramic bowl filled with water to wash the baby’s feet, an ancient act of welcoming the stranger. Ms. Edell cut the pomegranate, a totem of fertility with its plentiful seeds, while her mother held her son.Nothing says "covenant" like a pomegranate.

There’s no reliable data on the percentage of American Jewish boys who are circumcised each year. But there are some indicators to suggest why circumcision may be subject to increasing debate: A Pew survey of American Jews in 2013 revealed a significant rise in secular Jews who are marrying outside the faith, and roughly a third of intermarried Jews who are raising children say they aren’t raising them Jewish. Only 19 percent of American Jews said that observing Jewish law was an essential part of what being Jewish means. (In contrast, 42 percent said “having a good sense of humor” was essential.)“They’re inadvertent trailblazers. They’re certainly pushing the boundary of who can be a Jew,” said Rabbi Peter Schweitzer of the City Congregation for Humanistic Judaism in Manhattan. Rabbi Schweitzer does alternative ceremonies for people who choose not circumcise.Of course, there haven’t been changes across the board. For Orthodox families, who constitute about 10 percent of the American Jewish population, the traditional bris remains immutable.“You have a boy, you have a bris,” said Cantor Philip Sherman, an Orthodox mohel who estimates he’s performed more than 21,000 bris ceremonies. Those who choose to opt out “don’t have a connection to their Jewish heritage.”I could have told you that.“They don’t know how important and significant this is,” he said. “If they did, they wouldn’t take the position they’re taking.”Even for some progressive Jews, circumcising a son and holding a bris remains a quintessential part of being a Jewish parent. Sarah-Kay Lacks, who works at JCC Manhattan and calls her family “post-denominational,” said her son’s bris was a euphoric experience. Others speak about it similarly.“There’s a lot of vulnerability and anxiety” after a birth, said Rabbi Jacobs. The bris makes it possible “to ritualize that you’re part of something larger, you’re part of a people — past, present and future.”Rabbis and public health experts interviewed said that the great majority of Jewish parents still circumcise, and opting out remains almost taboo in much of the mainstream. A number of parents did not want to speak on the record about their decision, and some rabbis who had done alternative bris ceremonies asked not to be named publicly.“Right now, there is a ‘don’t ask/don’t tell’ policy within much of institutional Judaism when it comes to parents skipping circumcision,” said Rebecca Wald, the founder of Beyond the Bris, an online community for parents who are questioning circumcision.On forums like Beyond the Bris, in conversations and blog posts, Jewish parents argue against circumcision for both medical and social reasons. Some discuss keeping babies’ “natural” bodies intact and raise questions about preventable pain and trauma.Yet abortion is a wonderful women's health procedure. I smell irony! (And brimstone. That's the second Satan reference in this post, if you are counting.)Others see circumcision as an outdated practice. Among liberal Jews who have sought to make other aspects of Judaism more egalitarian, the bris also raises a feminist question: why should the most sacred act of Judaism, the linking of a child to the covenant, apply only to boys?WHOA, WHOA, WHOA! IS SOMEBODY ACTUALLY PROMOTING FEMALE CIRCUMCISION?A variety of alternative ceremonies for girls have blossomed in the Reform movement. Since it’s a new ritual, there’s no standard practice, said Rabbi Jacobs. Some parents wash the baby girl’s feet as a symbol of sacred welcome; some wrap the baby in a tallit, or prayer shawl; others light a candle, in honor of the new light in the community.Whew! I was worried for a moment.Just teach them that all men are pigs...The gift that keeps on giving.Even secular Jews, who do not keep kosher or go to synagogue, can face a wrenching decision over circumcision.A 46-year-old father who asked to be identified only as Aaron because he was discussing intimate details about his son said he was surprised by how powerfully he felt about circumcising. Raised in California by a father who was a German Jewish refugee and a feminist Jewish mother, he said he grew up “standard American Reform.”“For me, this wasn’t about a covenant with God, because I’m secular,” he said. “It was really about identification as a Jew, at the most visceral, embodied level.”Aaron’s wife, who is not Jewish and grew up in a country where circumcision was not the norm, was opposed to it. She did not want to inflict pain on her newborn baby. The decision became “the hardest thing my wife and I have ever had to deal with,” Aaron said.Ultimately, eight months into his wife’s pregnancy, Aaron agreed not to circumcise their son.“I didn’t want it to end our marriage and tear apart our family,” he said.Behold the power of shiksappeal!TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

Only not as good looking.Oh yeah, he's also a hypocritical left-fascist stooge who licked Okhrana's boots and cheered on jug-eared fascism all day, every day for eight years. Sorry, Comrade Robinson, you'll get no sympathy from me when the Black Mariah hauls you away because your buddies have one with my name on it gassed up and ready to go for when they seize power again.

The Court of Mad King Donald is not a presidency. It is an affliction, one that saps the life out of our democratic institutions, and it must be fiercely resisted if the nation as we know it is to survive.I wish that were hyperbole. The problem is not just that President Trump is selfish, insecure, egotistical, ignorant and unserious. It is that he neither fully grasps nor minimally respects the concept of honor, without which our governing system falls apart. He believes “honorable” means “obsequious in the service of Trump.” He believes everyone else’s motives are as base as his.The Trump administration is, indeed, like the court of some accidental monarch who is tragically unsuited for the duties of his throne. However long it persists, we must never allow ourselves to think of the Trump White House as anything but aberrant. We must fight for the norms of American governance lest we forget them in their absence.It gets worse and worse. The past week has marked a succession of new lows.Trump has started a sustained campaign to goad or humiliate Attorney General Jeff Sessions into resigning. Trump has blasted Sessions on Twitter, at a news conference, in newspaper interviews and at a campaign-style rally. He has called Sessions “beleaguered” and said repeatedly how “disappointed” he is in the attorney general.

Forget, for the moment, that Sessions was the first sitting U.S. senator to support Trump’s campaign, giving him credibility among conservatives. Forget also that Sessions is arguably having more success than any other Cabinet member in getting Trump’s agenda implemented. Those things aside, what kind of leader treats a lieutenant with such passive-aggressive obnoxiousness? Trump is too namby-pamby to look Sessions in the eye and say, “You’re fired.”

That’s what the president clearly is trying to summon the courage to do, however. The Post reported that Trump has been “musing” with his courtiers about the possibility of firing Sessions and naming a replacement during the August congressional recess. Trump has no respect for the rule of law. He is enraged that Sessions recused himself from the investigation of Russia’s meddling in the election, and thus is not in a position to protect the House of Trump from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.

According to the New York Times, “Sharing the president’s frustration have been people in his family, some of whom have come under scrutiny in the Russia investigation.” I’m guessing that means the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Who elected them , by the way?

Trump seeks to govern by whim and fiat. On Wednesday morning, he used Twitter to announce a ban on transgender people serving in the military, surprising his own top military leaders. A Pentagon spokesman told reporters to ask the White House for details; White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters to ask the Pentagon. Was Trump trying to reignite the culture wars?
Would the thousands of transgender individuals now serving in the military be purged? Was this actual policy or just a fit of indigestion?

Inside the mad king’s court, the internecine battles are becoming ever more brutal. Members of Trump’s inner circle seek his favor by leaking negative information about their rivals. This administration is more hostile to the media than any in recent memory but is also more eager to whisper juicy dirt about the ambitious courtier down the hall.

Trump’s new favorite, Anthony Scaramucci, struts around more like a chief of staff than a communications director, which is his nominal role. Late Wednesday night — after dining with Trump and his head cheerleader, Sean Hannity — Scaramucci took a metaphorical rapier to the actual chief of staff, Reince Priebus, by strongly hinting on Twitter that Priebus leaks to reporters. The next morning, Scaramucci told CNN that “if Reince wants to explain that he’s not a leaker, let him do that.” And in a profanity-laden phone call to the New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza, Scaramucci called Priebus “a f---ing paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac.”

Why bring in Scaramucci? Because, I fear, the mad king is girding for war. Trump is reckless enough to fire Mueller if he digs too deeply into the business dealings of the Trump Organization and the Kushner Companies.Ha! Old news. That dumb dago is out as of today! Madness? Evil!

What then? Will Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) draft and push through a new special-prosecutor statute so that Mueller can quickly be reappointed? Will House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) immediately open debate on articles of impeachment? Will we, the people, defend our democracy?

No, fuckface! Commies like you took away our guns. Ain't nobody gonna set your ass free Evgeni. You made your slave shackles, so bow and scrape before your master in them!

Do not become numb to the mad king’s outrages. The worst is yet to come.TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

This "gender" crap isn't going to stop until we start listening to the anguished cries of the poor people so afflicted, stop pumping them full of drugs, mutilating them and telling them all is sunshine and gumdrops from then on.Mr. Heyer was a pioneer in the early 1980s. He was miserable as a man and then miserable as a woman for eight years. He knows exactly what he did to himself and what was done to him.The "transgender community" and its enablers in the medical and psychological fields aren't about helping or healing. All they care about is money, power, sexual subversion, and fascist politics. Keep your loved ones away from them! (Ha, fat chance! Government is now "protecting" those confused about their sexuality with its money and guns.)The statistics are even worse than I thought. According to Mr. Heyer, before sex-change surgery the attempted suicide rate is 46% and after the surgery that rate is 45%!These poor souls need real love and real help, not drugs and knives.Please open your heart and open your mind and listen to Walter Heyer's amazing life story courtesy of Glenn Beck:

Whenever this flatulent cow utters "Catholicism" you know that is absolutely the last thing on her mind (such as it is).

BTW, Evie, how many times have you used contraception in your life? And how many times have you gone to confession? And when (if?) you do, do you include your desire that all God's children be enslaved by godless Leviathan among your offenses?

The votes from Republican Sens. Susan Collins, John McCain and Lisa Murkowski to stop their party’s repeal-Obamacare juggernaut were demonstrations of genuine courage. The appearance of this virtue in a dark time is not necessarily miraculous, but I couldn’t help noticing the striking intervention in this debate by 7,150 American nuns who called the Senate GOP’s core proposal “the most harmful legislation for American families in our lifetimes.”In a letter organized by the Catholic social justice lobby Network, the nuns cited Pope Francis — “health is not a consumer good, but a universal right, so access to health services cannot be a privilege” — and noted matter-of-factly: “To cut Medicaid and take health care from millions of people is not a pro-life stance.” Their plea was a reminder, particularly to more secular liberals, that religious witness in politics is not confined to the political right, that Christianity has long had a lot to say about economic and social inequities, and that pushing prophets inspired by faith out of the public square would be harmful to progressives as well as conservatives.In speaking out as they did, the socially minded nuns — who do the work of justice and mercy every day in hospitals, clinics, homeless shelters and schools — made clear that depriving millions of Americans of health coverage truly is a moral outrage. But while the most conservative among the faithful might not appreciate it, the sisters also did a service to believers of all stripes by demolishing stereotypes about what it means to be religious.

This is important because religion and the political standing of believers are badly harmed by the reality that so many Americans associate faith exclusively with the conservative movement. Large numbers of young people are abandoning organized religion (and particularly Christianity) altogether. A key reason: They see it as deeply hostile to causes they embrace, notably the rights of gays and lesbians.Harvard University’s Robert Putnam and Notre Dame’s David Campbell, the authors of “American Grace,” their definitive 2010 study of data on American religious attitudes, concluded that young Americans “have been alienated from organized religion by its increasingly conservative politics.” A Public Religion Research Institute survey in 2014 found that among millennials who no longer identify with their childhood religion, nearly a third said that “negative teachings about, or treatment of, gay and lesbian people” were either somewhat or very important to their disaffiliation. It’s true that some, particularly but not exclusively on the left, criticize religion and those devoted to it on principle. They believe, devoutly you might say, that faith in God is irrational and destructive. They see religion as promoting passivity, conformity and, in extreme cases, violence. The popularity of the late Christopher Hitchens’s book “god is not great” — Hitchens did not capitalize “God” on purpose — speaks to the strength of this view among a sizable group of Americans.But studies by PRRI and the Pew Research Center suggest that at least some who have moved away from formal religious affiliation do not see belief itself as a bad thing and remain spiritually engaged. They are turned off by the worldly, not the otherworldly, aspects of religion.Alexis de Tocqueville, that shrewd 19th-century student of American life, noted in “Democracy in America” that religion was stronger and faced less hostility in the United States than in Europe precisely because faith on our shores was far less associated with propping up political power and ideological interests.“Unbelievers in Europe attack Christians more as political than religious enemies,” Tocqueville wrote. “They hate the faith as the opinion of a party much more than as a mistaken belief, and they reject the clergy less because they are representatives of God than because they are the friends of authority.” Religious apologists for President Trump should take note.A critic could fairly observe that the argument I offer here is naturally congenial to me as a liberal. Nonetheless, my conservative brethren who worry about religion’s decline should consider that a rampant secularism may be less to blame than a narrowing of the scope of faith-based public engagement. Pope Francis’s insistence that the church be associated more with justice and mercy than with cultural warfare can thus be seen as precisely the right antidote for what ails organized religion.The sisters are right that claims to compassion and love are hollow when they are severed from society’s obligations to the most vulnerable. They also make clear that faith is something more than a cog in the status quo’s political machine.

Venezuelans stayed away from the polls in massive numbers Sunday in a show of protest against a vote to grant President Nicolas Maduro’s ruling Socialist Party virtually unlimited powers in the face of a brutal socio-economic crisis and a grinding battle against its political opponents and groups of increasingly alienated and violent young protesters.The government swore to continue its push for total political dominance of the once-prosperous OPEC nation, a move likely to trigger U.S. sanctions and new rounds of the street fighting that has killed at least 122 and wounded nearly 2,000 since protests began in April.BTW, exactly why are we still importing billions of dollars worth of oil and propping up this bloodthirsty bunch of criminals?Venezuela’s chief prosecutor’s office reported seven deaths Sunday in clashes between protesters and police across the country. Seven police officers were wounded when an explosion went off as they drove past piles of trash that had been used to blockade a street in an opposition stronghold in eastern Caracas.Across the capital of more than 2 million people, dozens of polling places were virtually empty, including many that saw hourslong lines of thousands voting to keep the government in power over the last two decades. By contrast, at the Poliedro sports and cultural complex in western Caracas, several thousand people waited about two hours to vote, many drawn from opposition-dominated neighborhoods where polling places were closed. But at least three dozen other sites visited by the Associated Press had no more than a few hundred voters at any one time, with many virtually empty.Opposition leaders had called for a boycott of the vote, declaring it rigged for the ruling party, and by late afternoon they were declaring the low turnout a resounding victory.

“It’s very clear to us that the government has suffered a defeat today,” said Julio Borges, president of the opposition-controlled but largely powerless National Assembly. “This vote brings us closer to the government leaving power.” Maduro called the vote for a constitutional assembly in May after a month of protests against his government, which has overseen Venezuela’s descent into a devastating crisis during its four years in power. Thanks to plunging oil prices and widespread corruption and mismanagement, Venezuela’s inflation and homicide rates are among the world’s highest, and widespread shortages of food and medicine have citizens dying of preventable illnesses and rooting through trash to feed themselves.The winners among the 5,500 ruling-party candidates running for 545 seats in the constituent assembly will be charged with rewriting the country’s constitution and will have powers above and beyond other state institutions, including the opposition-controlled congress.Maduro made clear in a televised address Saturday that he intends to use the assembly not just to rewrite the country’s charter but to govern without limitation. Describing the vote as “the election of a power that’s above and beyond every other,” Maduro said he wants the assembly to strip opposition lawmakers and governors of constitutional immunity from prosecution – one of the few remaining checks on ruling party power.Declaring the opposition “already has its prison cell waiting,” Maduro added: “All the criminals will go to prison for the crimes they’ve committed.” He said the new assembly would begin to govern within a week, with its first task in rewriting the constitution to be “a total transformation” of the office of Venezuela’s chief prosecutor, a former government loyalist who has become the highest-ranking official to publicly split from the president.“People aren’t in agreement with this,” said Daniel Ponza, a 33-year-old drywall contractor, as he watched a few dozen people outside a polling place in El Valle, a traditional stronghold of the ruling Chavista movement in western Caracas. “People are dying of hunger, looking for food in the trash. And I think this is just going to make things worse.” Still, for many others, the looming likelihood of authoritarian government was appealing after months of street blockades and street clashes.Chaos caused by fascists begets yet more fascism. Watch and learn, kiddies.Sculptor Ricardo Avendano traveled from the opposition-dominated eastern neighborhood of Las Mercedes to vote at the Poliedro sports and cultural complex, saying the government needed total power to control food prices and shut down protests.“The most important thing is imposing order,” he said. “If I’d been president there wouldn’t be protesters in the streets. They’d be prisoners.” The government was encouraging participation in Sunday’s vote with tactics that included offering social benefits like subsidized food to the poor and threatening state workers’ jobs if they didn’t vote.“I’m here because I’m hoping for housing,” Luisa Marquez, a 46-year-old hairdresser, as she waited to vote in eastern Caracas.The Trump administration has imposed successive rounds of sanctions on high-ranking members of Maduro’s administration, with the support of countries including Mexico, Colombia and Panama. Vice President Mike Pence promised on Friday that the U.S. would take “strong and swift economic actions” if the vote went ahead. He didn’t say whether the U.S. would sanction Venezuelan oil imports, a measure with the potential to undermine Maduro but cause an even deeper humanitarian crisis here.Ahead of Sunday’s vote, the opposition organized a series of work stoppages as well as a July 16 protest vote that it said drew more than 7.5 million symbolic votes against the constitutional assembly.

Orange Clump actually believes the lies it has told itself since it reached the age of reason (That's a reach on my part, but I'm feeling extra charitable at the moment.) It believes it is handsome, sexy, talented, bright, funny, good, hard-working, skilled, superior, popular, wise, genuine, honest and down to earth. The only lie it knows is a lie is the one about being a billionaire.I have no idea what happened to it to produce such prodigious psychological damage, but it must have been profound. Perhaps it wasn't a single great trauma but an accumulation of things over its life, making it more and more unstable as time passed.If I was a Freudian, I would posit some monstrous sexual incident like abuse by an authority figure. Perhaps its momma dressed it as a girl until well past puberty. It could have something to do with its grandfather's whorehouse (See Bloomberg.com: Trump's Family Fortune Originated in a Canadian Gold-Rush Brothel), although the Kennedys seemed to handle their rum-running fortune like they were Rockefellers or Vanderbilts.Or maybe it is just an asshole.Whatever the case, it cannot stand to be proved wrong or even to be told it might be wrong. That's not just evil and dangerous, it is profoundly ignorant. And you thought we had scraped the bottom of the barrel with The Community Organizer From The High Yellow Lagoon.I can't wait to see what ghoulish perv our democracy vomits up next...I really can't.Heap Big Lying Squaw, anyone?

About Me

First of all, the word is SEX, not GENDER. If you are ever tempted to use the word GENDER, don't. The word is SEX! SEX! SEX! SEX! For example: "My sex is male." is correct.
"My gender is male." means nothing. Look it up.
What kind of sick neo-Puritan nonsense is this? Idiot left-fascists, get your blood-soaked paws off the English language. Hence I am choosing "male" under protest.